Hope, Maine: Preserving the past to pave the way for the future

HOPE, Maine – Wild blueberries have long blanketed the hills and valleys of this quiet hamlet 15 miles from New England’s rocky shores.
They grew here before Native people roamed the lands, and before Sonja Howard’s family decided to put down roots in the grassy, windswept territory nine generations ago.
Every summer since she can remember, Howard’s relatives have flocked back, as the long sunny days begin to wane and the first breaths of autumn appear, to harvest the scattered blue clumps that emerge from these prickly bushes on the 800 acres of farmland the family owns.
The blueberries that grow here at the Brodis Blueberries farm aren’t like the kind you usually find in the produce aisle at the grocery store. Nobody planted these. Instead, farmers have removed barriers – trees, rocks and weeds – to allow for the crops to naturally flourish.
The pea-sized variety is typically sold fresh only at farm stands and markets in late July and early August. The Brodises sell a small portion of their yield to commercial growers, such as Wyman’s, which freezes and ships them across the country.
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But for those who have lent their labor and sweat to the land, the difference in the taste is clear.
Ron Howard, who married into Sonja Brodis’ family 48 years ago and now manages the business, said the more popular high-bush blueberries “just don’t have the same flavor and texture and sweetness” as the wild ones.
It’s a comparison those in Hope would also find apt to describe their neighbors. Much like the wild berries, the town has been cared for by generations who have sought to preserve a quieter way of life that is increasingly hard to find elsewhere.
Many of the town’s 1,500 residents are farmers, artisans and businesspeople working in trades forgotten by time – shoe cobbling, metal fabricating, fire truck restoration and bagpipe making, to name a few.
Brad Ellsworth, a longtime Hope resident who restores wooden boats, lovingly described his neighbors as “unique, eccentric people.”
This community in midcoast Maine is one of 19 towns of the same name across the country, six of which USA TODAY visited this summer.
In our visits to these places called Hope, from Michigan to Arkansas, Maine to Alaska, we looked for signs of optimism and what was getting in people’s way. Here’s what we found just inland of the bustling Maine tourist havens of Camden and Rockport, in one of the country’s oldest states.
At the heart of Hope is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, general store in Maine. Today, Damon McClure and his wife, Simone-Claire Girard Delevett, are its stewards.
Like many of the people in Hope, the couple are “from away” ‒ jargon locals use to delineate out-of-towners.  
As a child, McClure’s family traveled from Virginia every summer to visit Deer Isle, an island just south of Acadia National Park. But he didn’t move to the area until 2019. He had recently lost his job and was looking for a new challenge when a buddy told him about Hope General Store. McClure, Delevett and their daughter, who was going into her senior year in high school, visited and quickly grew attached.
“You can feel the age. You can feel like you’ve sort of gone back in time when you come in here,” McClure told USA TODAY. “That’s what we fell in love with.”
One of the biggest challenges they faced when they first arrived in February 2019 was quieting fears among town residents that they were going to change the beloved landmark and “mess it up.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit a year later, the general store, which typically acts as a convenience stop for locals to pick up coffee or the odd forgotten grocery item, became an even more essential part of town.
For much of the crisis, McClure ran the store alone because his staff was wary of the health risks.
The pandemic was one of the only times McClure said he has seen politics bubble up in the more than four years he has lived in Hope. The store required customers to wear masks before face coverings were mandated by the state. Most regulars were understanding, but some pushed back, and McClure had to turn away people who refused to follow the rule.
Overall, though, he said the store’s response to the pandemic helped him earn the trust of the community more quickly.
“We made it feel as friendly and as safe as we could,” McClure said. “We gained a lot of goodwill during that time.”
Today, McClure jokes that he knows more about what’s going on in Hope than anyone else, and he takes pride in the store’s role as the hub of the community. He stocks four-packs of Lion Stout from Sri Lanka for a regular who buys it three or four times a week, and he always has various flavors of Larabars on hand for one woman who loves them.
The general store also hosts “pub nights” twice a week in the back corner known as “the nook.” Rain, shine or snow, locals pile into built-in pine wooden benches and colorful metal chairs to sip on pints and shoot the breeze. The one rule: no talking politics, or religion.
“The most important thing about owning a store like this is just responding to what the community needs,” McClure said. “That’s really the reason we’re here.”
Like much of the country, residents of Hope are still contending with changes since the pandemic. In many ways, the crisis brought the community together.
When Brodis Blueberries found that it was no longer able to operate out of the family’s farm house for social distancing reasons, for instance, the town rapidly approved a permit to allow them to build a new structure. The same year, when their son’s distillery several towns away caught fire, Hope allowed him to operate out of the farm.
“They knew that this was kind of critically important for us,” Ron Howard said. “They said, ‘Hey, these are local folks, and let’s get this approval done.’ And they approved it. That doesn’t happen everywhere. … It does give us hope.”
But the pandemic also ushered in new dynamics. Every home in the town now has access to high-speed fiber optic internet. Locals say the change has encouraged more people in search of solitude to migrate from large metropolitan areas like Boston, New York and even as far as Texas to this sleepy Maine town.
Camden Road, one of the main thoroughfares in Hope, where the general store and other small businesses sit, used to see only a few cars pass in the morning and the afternoon. Now, cars drive by at a slow but steady clip throughout the day.
Longtime residents are quick to say they don’t mind new arrivals; they just worry the newcomers will rapidly change the community’s way of life.
“People move from other places, because they like it, but then they get here and they find that there are things that they liked from where they came,” said Stephanie Powers, a lifelong resident of Hope who works at Pine Ridge Carpentry, two doors down from the general store. “They want to try to sort of impose more bigger town ideas or processes.”
A few of those ideas have been about creating new town public works and police departments, both of which Powers says are unnecessary in a community with fewer than 2,000 people. A registered independent, she said the drive to preserve Hope isn’t about “keeping everything exactly the same, just the spirit of it and the intent.”
It’s a desire shared by many in town, across age, demographics and political parties.
On a cloudy afternoon, while he waited for a technician to repair his refrigerator, Creighton Drury, 75, sat in a lawn chair outside his home and explained that the piece of the town’s culture he most wants to safeguard is its integrity. Drury moved to Hope 15 or so years ago. He has lived in the pre-Civil War home he restored with his wife ever since.
“I always was raised by the saying ‘If you make a commitment, stick to it.’ And it seems like that is kind of a dying concept,” said Drury, a proud Democrat who displayed a 2020 Biden-Harris sign in the back of his garage.
He added, “I love this neighborhood, because if you ever had a problem, your neighbors would be there to help you.”
Politically, Hope’s population mirrors the rest of Maine. There are roughly 500 Democrats, 400 Republicans and more than 350 voters unaffiliated with a party. That’s to say: the town is divided.
Most people avoid talking about national politics. More often, conversations revolve around local issues.
Emily Davis, who has owned Hope Orchards with her husband, Brien, for more than two decades, said the rule of thumb is that you bring up politics only with people you know agree with you.
“There’s a hesitation for most of us to even initiate conversation,” Davis said at a potluck of 10 people hosted in the orchards.
The main divide in town falls more along geographical lines between Hope and South Hope. Hope tends to be more Democratic, and South Hope is more conservative.
The former of the two sits closer to the coast and features many of the main attractions in town, including the general store, the town offices and Hope Orchards. South Hope is a five-minute drive away on winding mountain roads, with meadows on either side and small strips of houses every few miles.
Susan Pushaw, 66, co-owns Pushaw’s Trading Post, the central store in South Hope. She remembers a time when the neighborhood considered seceding from Hope. People in the southern part of town didn’t want to make the trek to the area near the general store for town meetings, she said. They later did away with the initiative because of the legal complexities.
But today, the two areas might as well be separate towns.
Pushaw has never visited Hope General Store, despite the similarity of the businesses and their proximity. She grew up in South Hope next to her store and bought it with her brother Jerry after she retired from a food processing plant.
To Pushaw, Hope resembles Camden, the wealthier coastal town it borders.
Where Hope General Store sells sandwiches with brie cheese, apples and hummus and names like “the Tree Hugger,” the South Hope trading post mostly dabbles in greasier comfort food items like spicy chicken burgers, fried chicken, and steak and cheese sandwiches.
Pushaw, a Republican, doesn’t like getting involved with politics. There’s an “8 o’clock crew” that will come into the store and occasionally get into spats about national and local issues, but just like in other parts of Hope, the main priority is getting along.
“Every town has its politics,” Pushaw said. “They start out with little arguments, but it all ends up good before they all leave.”
Andy Swift’s studio – a massive, three-story chicken coop – sits at the top of Hatchet Mountain Road, in between Hope and South Hope. His artform is restoring antique fire engines.
Rusting ladder trucks and engine parts lay in the tall grass outside of his shop. On top of on old car at the entrance, an object designed to look like a missile reads “Jazz not War.”
This is the place Swift, 71, goes when his frustrations at the daily news cycle hit a tipping point. Fire engines are “almost primeval in that people understand that they’re here to help,” said Smith, who was a firefighter in Alaska for years, before moving back to his home state of Maine.
“Mechanically speaking, a fire engine is bringing the hope,” Swift said. “If there’s a fire, and you hear that bell, you hear that siren, you know, it’s coming to respond to the enemy that’s out of control.”
Although the Bernie Sanders sticker on Swift’s car hints at his political beliefs, he declined to talk about his affiliation, instead saying fire engines are a reminder that the purest forms of hope don’t have a political party.
Sitting beneath flickering fluorescent lights in his shop – tools, engine parts and photographs littering the counters behind him – Swift recounted work he did for the New York City Fire Department after 9/11.
Feeling helpless and needing a place to put his energy, Swift offered to restore a piece of the NYFD’s choosing. In December, a group of fire commissioners from the city arrived in Hope to deliver the hose wagon they wanted him to fix.
“This is very shortly after 9/11, and everybody’s heart has just been tenderized,” Swift says, with tears brimming. “One of the fire commissioners, Tom Fitzpatrick, looked around and he said, ‘It’s, it’s being done in a town called Hope.’
“So it is kind of cool to be in a town called Hope,” Swift added, his voice cracking.
When asked what brought them hope, over and over again, the people in Hope, Maine, pointed to the people around them.
“We need connection,” said Kyle Rittenburg, who with his wife, Anna, helps the Davises run Hope Orchards. He and Anna had organized the potluck for participants in their community sustained-agriculture program, who subscribe to receive produce directly from the farm every week. They’re hoping to use the orchards to help people “get connected with the food and hence the land.”
The Davises are all for the mission – and take pride it’s happening in Hope.
“Having the name ‘Hope’ sort of inspires us to be hopeful and to live hopefully,” Emily Davis said. “Live in hope, die in hope.”